Nature Unleashed: Tornado

Nature Unleashed is a franchise of apparently "Alternative" disaster films and thus far this is only my second one. Prior to this I had the *Ahem* honor of watching Nature Unleashed: Volcano which was beyond dire.

Nature Unleashed: Tornado is actually worse and that I didn't expect.

With a baffling plot, awful sfx, a lifeless story and a cast who look like they simply didn't want to be there this is a film with near no redeeming features.

It hurts me deep to realise I have two more of these to watch, they can't get worse though. Right?!

The Good:

Erm.....

The Bad:

SFX are laughable

Performances are wooden as hell

Incomprehensible plot

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

So bad the lead actress quit acting immediatly after

I am dumbfounded. We have churches and synagogues and books about this superior being that rules us, we have billions of people who worship this figure and devote their every fiber to him...but why? If God was real, why would he allow a movie as abysmal as "Tornado" to be created? "Tornado" is, shortly put, the worst thing I have ever seen.

Just from the prologue, I should've been able to tell that my eight bucks had been wasted down the drain. In a humorous flashback, a father photographs a tornado that has touched down on his ranch, and he straps himself to a tractor for security. However, the tornado is getting closer and closer, and time is running out! So what does this man do? What any sensible father would: he unstraps himself and commits suicide by getting sucked away into the whirly vortex behind him for no reason. This should have been forshadowing to the horror that awaited me, but I pressed on.

What is "Tornado" about? Well our characters drive somewhere, talk to some throw-away character for about five minutes, drive somewhere else, talk to some other guy, drive somewhere else, talk to another guy,rather rinse repeat 50x. In this films 98 minute long runtime, I'd say about 80 minutes are spent on talking in the car and talking to some overly dramatic expositionist. And the dialog is some of the worst and clichéd I've ever heard, with brilliant and witty lines like "God, if you're there, please help us all" or "I haven't touched myself in 20 years" "Nobody can stop me now! I am the ruler of a new world! *diabolical laughter*" Although, you could say the reason why there is so much dialog is because the film team was so embarrassed by the CGI; that would actually be a legit reason for filming so many pointless dialog scenes.

Speaking of CGI...oh, my, word. I cannot describe how asinine the effects in this movie are. I know this film is low budget and all...but, c'mon, this film was directed by a special effects artist, he couldn't give his team some input? The tornadoes look like the result of little kids drawing on the film tape with their crayons.

Actually, I think this film might be worth it for the ending. The 1st and 2nd act of this movie might the biggest waste of film tape in history, but the final act is where the crap hits the ceiling. Ever want to see a tornado with a face and arms? Ever want to see multiple tornadoes with faces and arms, picking up people and eating them as they twist along? Well, here is your movie. Seriously though, this is one of the funniest climaxes I've ever seen.

In all seriousness, the funniest part might not be in the movie itself, but in the "behind the scenes" extra. In it, the director goes off about how his film is "modern day art" and a "flawless masterpiece in every field." To this day, some say my jaw is still there, sitting on the floor. I understand wanting to show pride in your work, this guy goes on and on and on about how flawless this movie is, when he is absolutely oblivious to the steaming pile of feces he has produced. Even if Werner Herzog were to speak this way about Fitzcarraldo it'd be annoying, but Alain Jakubowicz's regard makes him look like a fool.

If I pass away and head on to the pearly gates, God will ask me "You were an atheist? Dear man, why did thou not believe in me?" and I will just pull this DVD out of my pocket. Then again, I would be carrying this DVD around in my pocket, so I guess I lose on every account.

This film was terrible. I almost couldn't believe that Sci Fi was actually airing this garbage. The plot/storyline is bad, the acting is pretty bad, and the special effects (the tornadoes, clouds, etc.) are extremely bad and look very fake. I personally think that I could've done better, more realistic-looking special effects than the people that made this movie. WHAT WERE THEY THINKING??????!!!!!! The opening scene is actually the best part of the whole movie, and that is not saying very much. It's still bad. I thought that the rest of the movie couldn't possibly be any worse; IT WAS!!! (i.e. It started off bad and went downhill from there.) Don't even waste your time watching this movie. Pass it up.

I also want to say that the other movies in the "Nature Unleashed" series are also pretty bad. Pass them up, too.

After watching the death of his father by a deadly tornado, Josh Pallady (Daniel Bernhardt) is left with just a necklace or medallion of some kind to remember him by. Due to chance, Josh is sent to Romania to film a press conference & some kind of gypsy rituals. This is where he meets Irena (Anya Lahiri), a gypsy woman who reads tarot cards. Irena quickly identifies the necklace as the Talisman.

The Talisman, as the story goes, was given by the angel Gabriel to a king and would be handed down to the "chosen one", who would save the gypsies from the wind. This is pretty much when the movie went south.

The acting by everyone involved is pretty bad, terrible even, but at least Anya Lahiri was something nice to look at. Her acting was not as bad as the other main characters, either. This is not saying much, but she was probably the best actor/actress in the movie.

Plotwise, the movie would have been better with just the tornadoes & the tornado chasing scenes. The whole thing could have done without the satanic cult subplot. I do not really see where that fits into a movie titled "Tornado". Anyhow, if it was not for some decent looking tornado effects, which is why I wanted to watch this, I would have rated it lower. As it stands I leave it a 3/10.

Well, I stumbled upon the 2005 movie titled "Nature Unleashed: Tornado" here in 2021. Sure, I hadn't even heard about it. But after all, I do like natural disaster movies, and this 2005 movie definitely seemed like such a movie. So of course I sat down to watch it.

And it turns out that writer J. Paul V. Robert set out to implement a movie with equal amounts of natural disaster, politics and superstitious mumbo jumbo. And that was just too much of a scrambled heap of rubbish. It utterly made the movie into something abysmal and rather stupid to watch.

I must admit that I found "Nature Unleashed: Tornado" from director Alain Jakubowicz to be not quite what I had expected and believed it to be. Nor can I say that I found much of any enjoyment in the movie as the storyline unfurled and the storyline just fell further and further apart into stupidity.

Visually then "Nature Unleashed: Tornado" was somewhat of a mixed bag, because some scenes were rather nicely filmed and set up, while other scenes were just eyesores to witness given the atrocious CGI effects.

Sure, "Nature Unleashed: Tornado" was a disaster movie. But not a natural disaster movie, mind you. This was just not a great movie.

My rating of the 2005 movie "Nature Unleashed: Tornado" lands on a mere two out of ten stars.